With the ability to create everything from human organs to houses, 3D printing is being touted as one of the next big disruptive technologies. CampdenFB looks at whether family offices can mint any money from the industry

For more than 20 years, US-based investment adviser Trent Capital Management has invested its clients’ money in smart technology companies. Mainly in mobile phone companies. As of now, the company has a new investment policy: 3D printing.

“It’s the first thing we’ve seen come along that is going to be as universally disruptive as the cellular telephone industry,” says Trent Capital Management partner Jim Folds, who is advising the company’s family office clients among others that the technology’s time is about to come.

Almost two decades since the concept of disruptive innovation was thrust into public consciousness, companies have both risen and fallen prey to the process. Kodak was a loser, Amazon was a winner, and the iPhone alone has disrupted a number of technologies – cameras, alarm clocks and radios, to name a few.

Almost two decades since the concept of disruptive innovation was thrust into public consciousness, companies have both risen and fallen prey to the process. Kodak was a loser, Amazon was a winner, and the iPhone alone has disrupted a number of technologies – cameras, alarm clocks and radios, to name a few.

But this June Harvard Business School professor Jill Lepore argued it was time to give the concept (whereby new innovations suddenly shake up the marketplace, replacing predecessor technologies) a rest.